The night in September 2018, when the National Museum burned down in Quinta da Boa Vista, exposed a fragility that went beyond the historic building. The lost collection also revealed the precariousness of the funding model for educational and cultural institutions in Brazil, dependent on volatile public budgets and operational revenues that are insufficient to cover excellence.
A few months later, Law 13.800 was enacted, regulating endowment funds in the country. Known by the English term "endowment ," these funds came to have clear rules for fundraising, governance, and the perpetuity of donations.
The text is less important for its technical detail than for its practical effect: it offered Brazilian educational philanthropy the legal framework that supports century-old universities abroad.
The numbers show what has changed. At PUC-Rio, donations from alumni jumped from R$ 500,000 in 2019 to R$ 23 million in 2024. The goal for 2026, R$ 35 million, should fund 130 scholarships. The volume has grown, the donor base has grown, and above all, the perception has grown that supporting a university is not the exclusive task of current students or taxpayers.
Looking outward helps to gauge what's at stake. Harvard manages $56.9 billion in assets, responsible for 37% of its operating income and $784 million annually in financial aid. Yale, Princeton, and Stanford hold assets between $30 and $40 billion.
In all cases, the capital remains untouched, and only the income funds scholarships, research, and infrastructure. Donating is contributing to something designed to last for centuries.
None of this is intended to glorify foreign experiences. What matters is naming what is being formed here. A survey by the Institute for the Development of Social Investment (IDIS) already counts 107 endowment funds in the country, totaling R$ 157 billion, of which 52 are focused on education. Small compared to the American standard, the curve has shown a consistent inflection since 2019.
Why donate? The usual answer, gratitude, hides a more sophisticated calculation. Graduates decide to contribute when they recognize that the university trained them under conditions that are difficult to replicate today, and when they understand that maintaining that standard requires something beyond the tuition fees of current students.
In practice, the donation serves to preserve a collective asset from which the donor indirectly benefits: in the qualifications of the professionals the university will train, in the prestige of the diploma already obtained, and in the research that circulates in society.
Top universities are losing talent due to an inability to offer competitive scholarships, in a country where social mobility still decisively depends on higher education.
Former students often have an emotional connection to the institution, but lack the technical channel to convert this bond into a structured financial commitment. Hence the importance of the PUC-Rio Alumni Ambassador: to explain the instrument, qualify the donation, show how each contribution connects to a scholarship, a laboratory, a career. A role of translation.
Returning to the National Museum: the building was reconstructed with mixed funding, in which private resources played a decisive role. High-quality Brazilian universities now have the opportunity to reverse this path, building a solid foundation before their social potential dissipates.
For those who decide on capital allocation, regulate the third sector, or design educational policies, the question is no longer whether the model works in Brazil. It has become who positions themselves first.
* Guilherme Morais is a lawyer and PUC-Rio Alumni Ambassador.
